Why is Canada still in bed with Saudi Arabia?

If Stephen Harper wants to start filling the essentially empty vessel he calls a “values-driven” foreign policy, Sweden showed him a clear path to follow this week.

Stockholm announced it is dumping a 10-year-old defence agreement with Saudi Arabia — worth over half a billion dollars in the last five years to Swedish arms companies — because of the Riyadh government’s despicable record on human rights at home and abroad.

Sweden’s decision, following a similar decision by Germany earlier this year not to sell Leopard tanks to the Saudis, sits uncomfortably beside the Harper government’s determination to fulfil a $10 billion contract to sell Canadian-made armoured cars to the Riyadh regime. That contrast is particularly stark because the Canadian LAV III armoured cars are not going to Saudi Arabia’s army — they’re for the National Guard, which answers only to the king and whose prime job is crushing internal dissent.

It would be interesting to hear how supplying Riyadh with the hardware to trash any drive for civil rights in Saudi Arabia squares with the Harper government’s pompous claim that its foreign policy is driven entirely by respect for moral values and principles. What that means in practical terms has never been spelled out.

Even John Baird — the most articulate of the grey and nameless men who have been Harper’s foreign ministers since he came to power — was unable to explain it when he spoke at the United Nations General Assembly last year. Indeed, his performance was an acutely embarrassing demonstration of the vacuous hubris for which Canada is now best known on the international stage.

Harper’s foreign policy appears to consist solely of pandering to domestic voting blocs. From Ukraine to Sri Lanka, from Israel to China, the only common principle is unprincipled political opportunism.

Dealing with Saudi Arabia has for decades been a problem for Western democracies. Riyadh’s control of much of the world’s oil supplies persuaded many governments, to their shame, that supporting Saudi Arabia was in their own national interests. And Saudi Arabia became very deft at using its surplus oil wealth to buy arms — which it didn’t need and had no intention of using, except against its own people — as a means of keeping the West beholden. The arms trade is rife with corruption, which suits the Saudi Arabian business style perfectly.

The Taliban, al Qaida, radical Sunni Muslim factions throughout the Middle East and North Africa and, most recently, the sub-human butchers of the Islamic State group — all owe their birth and survival to Saudi patronage.

Riyadh’s whip-hand has weakened in recent years, however. Changes in the energy market have made Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves less important.

There is also an abundance of evidence that it’s Saudi money that has propagated and fuelled Islamic extremism for at least a quarter of a century. The Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the al Qaida terrorist network, radical Sunni Muslim factions throughout the Middle East and North Africa and, most recently, the sub-human butchers of the Islamic State group — all owe their birth and survival to Saudi patronage.

The Swedish cabinet of centre-left Prime Minister Stefan Loefven has for months been debating whether to continue selling arms to Saudi Arabia because of the absolute monarchy’s vile record on human rights at home and abroad. The breaking point came when the Riyadh regime this week barred Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström from speaking about democracy and human rights at an Arab League meeting in Cairo.

Wallström was offered the platform because Sweden recently became the first European Union country to recognize the Palestinian state. But any illusion that Sweden was now a useful fool in the half-century efforts by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to keep the Palestinians in a state of perpetual victimhood quickly vanished. Riyadh got wind of Wallström’s intention to use the Arab League platform to castigate Saudi Arabia for its almost total denial of civil rights for women and its recent ramping-up of its already draconian suppression of dissent by equating any domestic criticism of the regime with terrorism.

Riyadh described Wallström’s planned remarks, later published by the Swedish government, as an unacceptable intrusion in Saudi Arabian domestic affairs and leaned on its allies to dis-invite her. The Arab League even issued a statement condemning Wallström’s planned remarks as “irresponsible and unacceptable.” What the Swedish minister planned to say was “incompatible with the fact that the constitution of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia (religious) law.”

The debate in Sweden was sharp both inside and outside cabinet. When it became known last week that the Stockholm government intended to stop selling military supplies to Saudi Arabia — much of it radar systems and worth nearly $40 million last year — Swedish industrial leaders were outraged.

Business leaders from 31 companies, including Volvo, Electrolux, Ericsson and H&M, co-signed an open letter published in the prestigious Stockholm daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter saying the cancellation will damage Sweden’s reputation as a reliable trading partner.

Then they spoiled the argument by trotting out one of the most fatuous claims regularly made by corporations and their political hangers-on to justify questionable business dealings. “Trade is important for promoting the development of human rights and democracy,” said the letter.

That argument has been used by successive Canadian governments and many others in the West to justify profiteering in places like China. But while cozying up to Beijing since the early 1970s has made many Canadian corporate leaders grossly wealthy, and established among Canadian scholastic and other institutions what the Canadian Security Intelligence Service calls Beijing’s “agents of influence,” it has so far done next to nothing to improve the civil or legal rights of ordinary Chinese. Or, for that matter, Saudis.

Jonathan Manthorpe is the author of “Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan,” published by Palgrave-Macmillan. He has been a foreign correspondent and international affairs columnist for nearly 40 years. He was European bureau chief for the Toronto Star and then Southam News in the late 1970s and the 1980s. In 1989 he was appointed Africa correspondent by Southam News and in 1993 was posted to Hong Kong to cover Asia. For the last few years he has been based in Vancouver, writing international affairs columns for what is now the Postmedia Group. He left the group last year and now writes for a range of newspapers and websites. [email protected]

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

7 comments on “Why is Canada still in bed with Saudi Arabia?”

And yet blogging comments continue to be disabled pointing if not covering these absolute hypocritical points before, on all….as the saying goes …..A pox on all your houses…Because you as part of the media have reluctantly been pulled and tugged all the way to the very points and statements made now by the (gee their safe to say things we dare not) Swedish government !..
Now,—– isn’t it long overdue to have a debate over the justification for Harper’s bailouts or more importantly the future setup by Harper to ‘BAIL-IN’ all our self engorged ‘too big to fail banks’? Oh, just in case—Harper 2013 Budget, page 145.

Another great piece of journalism by Mr. Manthorpe, connecting the dots in the 21st century. How many countries base their GDP on the manufacturing of arms and the tax resources that other countries allocate to purchase them.

THis report demonstrates that harper is full of deceit and hot air when he talks about supporting women all over the world. Saudi Arabia is one of the most oppressive regimes on earth- maybe harper needs it not just to sell arms to be used on Saudis, but as an example of how to trample on human rights- he is learning from them how to trample ours.

Sweden and Germany stopped financing Saudi Arabia because of the Saudi’s human rights records. This shows that Sweden and Germany have a conscious and are serious about stopping the funding of terrorist group as it’s been suspected for years that the Saudi’s are financing terrorism. The cons aren’t serious about fighting terrorism, they’re only serious about control and removing our rights.